WTF! - We're The Fockers!

I remember being too young to understand how weird it was for Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore to sleep on separate twin beds. Nor did it bother me that this iconic family sitcom of the '60s was sponsored by Kent cigarettes (though why would it, when mom and dad puffed away beside us kids on our '60s plastic-coated sofa?) And then there were constant rumors that Soupy Sales was being canceled for one ribald joke or another—usually a play on words about baseballs, or a clever one-liner using the letters 'K' and 'F'.

But TV was clean. Almost nothing salacious made it past the network censors. And if something did, the FCC and the press were all over whatever unlucky station that crossed the subjective line we all understood but could never precisely define, i.e., the things we don't talk about in polite company, whatever that means.

Movies were far freer about such things. It was safe to say almost anything, and not just innuendo, but nudity, profanity and sex--because of the iron clad protection of a rapidly evolving motion picture rating system (MPAA) for age-appropriateness and audience suitability. By the late '60s, with nearly all social norms on the run, media content of every stripe was pushing the censorship envelope.

The challenge for teens of the day was how to get into the most restrictive movies (the highest rated, in our book) with all the dirty stuff we weren't supposed to see yet, if ever. I remember, at fifteen, watching the Eastwood flick, Coogan's Bluff, a dozen or more times to catch all those steamy club scenes (Fortunately a bunch of friends worked there and let me in for free). And who of a certain age, can forget the uproar caused by a then X-rated Last Tango in Paris, or even Fritz the Cat?

Now, consider the impact of cable TV on Community Standards. We saw a complete turnaround in one generation as cable programming came to dominate content standards after Americans signed up for cable subscriptions in droves. Fast forward to the '90's and beyond, with shows like South Park (first episode title: "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe"), The Ren & Stimpy Show, Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect, Two and a Half Men. The list goes on. These shows simply didn't hold back, and what they still couldn't say or depict, was implied or caricatured so explicitly that almost nothing remained out of bounds.

Which brings me back to the Fockers and the wonderful world of internet shortcut acronyms, like WTF. After years of broadcast-only media and its requisite censorship, the internet, with its one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many communication forced censorship to finally and fully confront reality. We can now say or mock almost anything.

Profanity (explicit and implied), violence (real and imaged), and sex (especially sex—both explicit and implied—of course) have gone mainstream and can be found in one form or another in all but the tamest of content. It's finally okay to say ass on TV and not mean donkey.  Focker is of course a play on words, but now the kids are finally in on the joke. The even more blatant, WTF, has gone mainstream and it's regularly used in polite circles, news articles and on good old broadcast TV.

As a Boomer with (thankfully) grown children, except for a few caveats involving common sense and enlightened parenting, I find this relaxed paradigm refreshing, even liberating. Finally we can stop bullshitting our kids that polite people don't ever cuss. And while kids grow up fast these days, often with far too little perspective to process the information coming at them from all sources, this is how it is.

I have a feeling we ain't seen nothin' yet. I guess that means we can either long for the days of twin beds for sitcom married couples or we can simply say: WTF!